The 23-year-old, his friend Arbaaz Merchant and model Munmun Dhamecha were granted bail on 28 October in the cruise 'drug bust' case.
No evidence against Aryan Khan, nothing objectionable in WhatsApp chats: Bombay high court bail order
Mumbai - 20 Nov 2021 21:18 IST
Our Correspondent
Actor Shah Rukh Khan's son Aryan Khan, his friend Arbaaz Merchant and model Munmun Dhamecha were granted bail by the Bombay high court on 28 October in the infamous cruise 'drug bust' case.
A detailed report of the court's order was made available today. In the report, justice Nitin Sambre has stated that there was no prima facie evidence to state that the 23-year-old, Merchant and Dhamecha had conspired to commit offences under the Narcotics Drug and Psychotropic Substances Act.
The court also said that nothing objectionable was found in their WhatsApp chats either.
During the raid, nothing was recovered from Aryan while Merchant and Dhameja were allegedly found possessing six grams of charas and five grams of hashish.
An excerpt from the court order quoted by the legal website LiveLaw.in read, “Having regard to the material brought on record by the Respondent (NCB) on the issue of conspiracy, this court prima facie has not noticed any positive evidence against the Applicants on the said issue. This Court is of the opinion that the claim put forth by the Respondent that Applicants should be considered to have intention to commit an offence under the NDPS Act, having found in possession of commercial quantity, in the backdrop of case of hatching conspiracy is liable to be rejected (sic).”
On the WhatsApp chats, the order said, “After having gone through the WhatsApp chats extracted from Applicant/Accused number one’s (Khan) phone, nothing objectionable could be noticed to suggest that Applicant nos.1 and 2 (Arbaaz Merchant) or all three applicants along with other accused persons in agreement have meeting of minds and have hatched conspiracy committing the offence in question (sic).”
The trio was arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) on 2 October.
Aryan was represented in the high court by senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, who argued that his client could not be held responsible for what the NCB recovered from Merchant or the others. Rohatgi, a former attorney general of India, also argued that the WhatsApp chats being cited by the agency as evidence of a conspiracy to procure narcotics were from an earlier period.
